HP cuts more jobs than expected

San Francisco
-
Hewlett Packard, the ailing technology firm, aims to slash more jobs as its relevance continues to take on losses. Are the good fortunes of the company on the decline?

Hewlett-Packard said on Thursday that it aims to cut another 11 to 16,000 jobs by the end of October, bringing the total number of planned layoffs to a maximum of 50,000 and nearly doubling the largest reduction ever for the 75-year-old technology firm that seems to be losing its luster as well.

HP's move revises the previous target of 34,000 job cuts upwards. The current CEO has aimed for a reduction of 27,000 jobs initially.

When the program was first started, the company had almost 350,000 employees. As of October, it had 317,500.

The Palo Alto-based company said the reductions will save an extra $1 billion annually by October 2016 and get 2-3 cents per share in the year of October 2014.

Even so, analysts worry that the company's recent good fortune, especially in a recovering market for things like personal computers, might be short-lived like many technology trends are. The company said that Microsoft Corp.'s end of support for its nearly 13-year-old Windows XP operating system this April has boosted corporate demand for PCs.

HP announced these cuts while reporting that the net income in the three-month period ending April 30 rose 18 percent to $1.27 billion, which comes out as 66 cents per share.